The Other Doctor
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Shaken by the encounter with Ruth, the Doctor has a different conversation with her Fam. Spoilers for Fugitive of the Judoon.


Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who unfortunately.

Anyway, how did you like Fugitive of the Judoon - it was great to see Captain Jack again and let's hope we see him again in the future. But what fascinated me the most was the inclusion of a different Doctor. I've got some ideas about her, and I hope you enjoy what I've written. It's an alternate ending scene since I felt the canon ending scene was lacking.

Enjoy!

* * *

The Other Doctor.

As she walked back to the TARDIS where, hopefully, she would reunite with her friends and get away from Gloucester, and hopefully get some of her sanity back, the Doctor was left to her shaken thoughts. It wasn't often she was shaken by her experience, but it did happen and it left the Doctor thinking and questioning everything she knew was true. Most occasions were easy to work out, but not this.

Finding the Judoon were arriving in the city in force looking for a fugitive was a surprise given how the Judoon didn't technically have any jurisdiction in this century where Earth was concerned, although truthfully the Doctor could understand their coming to Gloucester in force; it wasn't as if they could use their H2O scoop to wrench the entire city and plonk it down on the moon as they had with the hospital where she had met Martha, but the Doctor had deliberately impersonated an official with the authority to override their decisions because she knew the Judoon, as well as the Doctor did with humans.

The humans would likely send in the troops, whether it was the police who'd go out armed to protect their people and loved ones, or the army. Or even worse, civilians would start attacking the Judoon themselves, only the end result would be the same.

Humanity wouldn't stand a chance if they got into the Judoon's way, and while she knew a few had probably died she knew - and she hated to admit it since it brought back memories of when she was that little man in the hat with the umbrella - it was better only a few had died, rather than a whole city.

The Doctor shook her head; she had little doubt the whole mess would be covered up, although she wondered how the British Government would manage it, without UNIT to help mitigate the worst of the event, it wasn't her problem. She had enough on her plate without worrying about the human bureaucratic need to hush things like this up when they should be learning from the experiences.

No, she was more interested in what she had just learnt; before this whole mess had started she had known from the moment she had found out the Judoon were preparing to transport platoons down to Earth whatever or whomever they were looking for must be someone dangerous otherwise they wouldn't have risked going to all this trouble arriving in force like that.

The Doctor had been expecting a murderer, a smuggler, an engineer who had accidentally blown up a number of star systems, something like that - she knew how to handle that sort of fugitive, but what she had found had left her questioning who she was and what she had done, and she didn't like it one little bit.

When she and Ruth had arrived at that lighthouse; the Doctor had little idea of what they were likely to find out there away from the Judoon, but finding an unmarked grave in a situation like this would always attract her attention. But the Doctor had not expected to find after she had grabbed a spade and unearthed the TARDIS. Or a version of the old Type 40 she'd stolen so many centuries ago, and had been the one constant in her lives.

That had been shocking enough, but Ruth, the woman whom she had been protecting and questioning, was _her. _

The Doctor's mind kept racing as she thought of the discovery when Ruth - she refused to even _think _of that woman as her, not after what she had seen her do although the Doctor knew she was being hypocritical since she had done worse over the centuries - had teleported her into a smaller and slightly differently styled console room the Doctor hadn't used since her third incarnation, and they had both argued about being the Doctor.

Ruth had dismissed her, saying she was a future incarnation, but the Doctor knew that wasn't true; she knew all of her past selves, and she knew for a fact hers was the only female regeneration so far.

Even stranger - and worse - was that confrontation with Gat, who was another Time Lord. And apparently Ruth had once worked for her, for Gallifrey.

The Doctor was left reeling by the news although she herself had worked for the Time Lords starting in the latter days of her second incarnation, frequently in her third, and in some of her other incarnations onwards before the Time Lords had destroyed the relationship with that farce of a trial which included the Valeyard. After that, she had put distance between herself and her people.

The Doctor had been so sickened by their corruption, their willingness to not only sacrifice Earth for a few secrets, but also going so far as to bring the Valeyard into the equation, even though there was still a lot of debate in her mind at how he had come about; the Valeyard's own trial had answered a few questions, but there was still some doubt. In the end, the Doctor had worked very very hard to move on, and not be him.

It appeared Ruth had taken things a little further than the Doctor had by escaping; she had deliberately buried the TARDIS she used, made herself human, and got herself a simple human life while keeping the Time Lord side of her hidden away where anyone could find it. It was a bit careless, but it was a strategy.

Why would Gat need to involve the Judoon in the first place? The Time Lords didn't _need them, _they had better and more discreet methods rather than resorting to the blunderbuss methods of the Judoon.

The Doctor had told her she and Ruth - still not thinking of the woman as herself - Gallifrey was gone, but Gat hadn't believed her. Urgh, another typical Time Lord, self-important to the point of stupidity.

She had tried to make Gat see that Gallifrey was gone, from her perspective. She had shown Gat and image of the Capitol of Gallifrey ravaged and destroyed after the Master had finished with it, and that Gat and Ruth existed in her own past, although that was impossible since she had never had an incarnation like Ruth ever.

Gat hadn't listened. Instead, she had lifted the laser rifle Ruth had with her - even more reason for her to deny this woman was her; war incarnation aside, she still didn't like using weapons since it was so hard not to use them and yet this woman seemed to use them freely without a care in the world, and those reasons were more concrete than the dodgy shirt - and killed herself because Ruth had reprogrammed it to kill her. Then the pair of them had managed to escape from the shocked and likely very confused Judoon, citing contract clauses that even the Judoon couldn't break.

Inside Ruth's TARDIS, the mood between the pair of them was bleak since the Doctor was thinking and Ruth was angry with her for interfering; if she really thought the Doctor was not going to interfere, then she didn't even know herself if they were indeed the same person and the Doctor had many doubts about that. But the Doctor didn't care about Ruth's feelings, she didn't give a damn if she had overstepped her bounds when she had asked the Judoon and Gat questions about what was going on, she was more interested in the way Ruth and Gat had argued they were in the Doctor's past.

But she knew that wasn't possible. She had met and known many Time Lords from Borusa, Engin, Goth, Spandrell, Romana, Rodan, Flavia, Darkel, the Rani…and she had never ever met Gat, ever. What the hell was going on?

Thinking about Ruth, the Doctor had no idea what she was doing now, and right now she didn't really care since she was still trying to work things out, but she was tempted to follow her in her own TARDIS and hopefully get some answers although whether or not the woman would give them to her was an open question. But if Ruth really was her, then the Doctor was willing to bet she'd cause problems.

"There she is!"

The Doctor lifted her head and to her relief, she saw Yaz and Ryan.

"Doctor! Found you!"

When her two friends got to her, the Doctor stopped in her tracks. "Hey, what happened? Where you been?" Ryan panted.

The Doctor didn't reply, she tried to muster a smile at her friends, but she couldn't manage it, she was still reeling from what she had just seen and experienced. She just looked between Yaz and Ryan, seeing the concern in their faces.

"Where's Ruth? The Judoon things are gone."

Any other time the Doctor would have replied, or she would have sighed at Ryan's need to state the obvious. But not right now.

"You're never going to guess what happened to us," Yaz added.

_Oh, no…What now? _the Doctor thought to herself, looking at Yaz as she prepared herself for more blows.

"Captain Jack Harkness said hello," Ryan said.

_What? _

The Doctor gaped at him. "Wha-? Jack, you've met Jack? Where is he?"

"Long story."

XXX

"'Beware the Lone Cyberman. Do not let it have what it wants, at all costs,'" Graham recited in the TARDIS - her TARDIS, not that one Ruth used, although the moment she had been inside that ship, the Doctor had felt the same symbiotic bond which had been present for centuries. Being inside her own ship was like being doused in warm water and then being pushed into a sauna after being in an icy bath in comparison, even though they were the same TARDIS.

The Doctor looked at her three friends as she listened from her sitting position. Finding out Jack had scooped them up although the scoop he was using was not of good quality, and had trouble getting through the shield the Judoon had placed around Gloucester, had been a shock, this news was something the Doctor could have done without.

She wanted answers to her questions about the Timeless Child which had caused the Master to destroy the Citadel, she wanted to find out more about why Ruth had gone on the run, and where they were in the timelines. The last thing she wanted was to deal with the Cybermen again.

"That's all he said?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah, he got interrupted," Ryan said.

"Who is he anyway?"

The Doctor held back the urge to sigh; while she loved how inquisitive Yaz was, sometimes her questions could grate. "An old friend. I met Jack a few regenerations back. He was conning passing time travellers at the time, only when he met me, he'd accidentally gotten hold of a space ambulance containing nanites which hadn't encountered humans, and eventually, they began rewriting human DNA when they repaired a little boy who'd died in a World War II air raid. Don't worry, it was sorted out," she added when she saw their looks. "Anyway, he changed and became the leader of a group dedicated to stopping hostile aliens in the 21st century."

"I liked him. Kind of cheesy."

"But good cheesy," Yaz commented with a shrug as she looked at Ryan.

The Doctor laughed. "Yeah, that's Jack," she smiled nostalgically, remembering all those moments where he flirted his way through life (she prayed he hadn't done anything too extreme with her friends, although there wasn't anything nasty about it since it was Jack). But her smile disappeared as she thought more about what Jack had warned them about, the message he had been trying to get to her although he hadn't managed it thanks to the Judoon. "He didn't say any more about the Cybermen?"

"Er, he said they were a fallen empire," Graham's brow crinkled as he tried to remember what Jack had said, although he was having problems since everything had happened so fast, "and they should stay that way."

The Doctor snorted. "He's got that right," she said darkly, but at the same time, she was curious and worried. What in Omega's name had happened to the Cybermen to reduce them like that?

Yaz looked at her curiously and uncertainly, seeing for herself that she was in agreement with what Jack had said. "What are they, these Cybermen?"

The Doctor was about to reply. She had it all worked out, she would say "_They're one of the most dangerous species I've ever encountered," _but as she thought about it, she decided to give them a different explanation.

"Cybermen are a cybernetic species; part humanoid, part machine," she explained as she stood up slowly. "They first appeared on a world called Mondas - Earth's twin planet, although that was blasted out of orbit centuries ago in some disaster; don't ask me what, I have never worked it out personally. The planet was forced to drift for centuries in interstellar space, its inhabitants forced underground and forced to survive by a thread."

"Earth had a twin planet?" Graham repeated in shock.

"Yeah."

"What happened to the people there, did the Cybermen kill them?"

"In a sense. You see, the people of Mondas were drifting for centuries, but over time - there were so many reasons, too many to go into detail now - their people became weaker and weaker. Their lifespans were getting shorter and shorter, so their scientists and doctors devised robotic parts for their bodies until they could be almost completely replaced," the Doctor shook her head grimly before the memories of those dark days on Mondas resurfaced in her mind. "But one of the biggest reasons was because the Mondasians had devised an interstellar propulsion drive for the planet, but the workers sent out on the surface went mad with the sight of the outside because they'd been imprisoned for centuries. So they had to augment the brain until they removed all emotions."

Yaz placed a hand to her mouth. "Oh, my god."

The Doctor nodded, remembering her disgust for what Doctorman Allan and the Committee had done. "But since then the Cybermen have become one of the deadliest species in the cosmos, right up there with the Daleks."

"Oh, I can't wait to meet them, then," Ryan said sarcastically.

The Doctor snorted. "I can count on both hands numerous times, how many races would be glad to see the Cybermen disappear. With their emotions gone, the Cybermen desired power and at the same time, they just want to survive since they've always been a race in decline. But they are destructive. They destroy entire civilisations, and the survivors are transformed into Cybermen themselves because Cybermen can't reproduce any other way. That's why they're so feared and hated. I have stopped them doing the same to Earth many, many times. If I hadn't, you would likely never exist. You would either be Cybermen yourselves, all emotion and virtually all traces of what makes you Graham, Yaz, Ryan erased."

Yaz shuddered and she actually took a step back. The Doctor looked at her friends sympathetically, but she hoped this would make it clear the Cybermen were not a race to mess with.

"And they are in our future?" Graham asked worriedly, clearly not happy with the prospect of tangling with even a lone member of a race who'd turn him into a robot given the chance.

"It looks that way," the Doctor's voice was grim while she mentally went over plans for how to deal with this lone Cyberman. "They're always somewhere; sometimes they are empires, sometimes they're scavengers, or they have frozen themselves following a terrible war, waiting for the day when someone really stupid wakes them up. But a lone Cyberman is just as bad. Believe me, Fam; if someone really stupid encounters that Cyberman, and knows nothing about them, then they will really stupid decisions where mass slaughter ensures. They gain footholds that way. That Cyberman may be on its own, but if it's given the right resources, and gets access to a large population. They rebuild their force and then the Cyber race is back again, destroying whole races and not giving a damn about what they're doing. When we meet this Lone Cyberman, we are going to kill it before it kills anyone else."

"I never imagined you would say that, Doctor," Yaz commented, looking disturbed with the thought.

"The Cybermen are dangerous, Yaz," the Doctor retorted, her voice harsh and serious; it was dangerous thought process like that which allowed the Cybermen to thrive. She had seen Klieg and Kaftan make the fatal mistake of thinking they could enlist the Cybermen on Telos, only for both to realise their mistakes too late, later seeing them making bargains with the likes of Tobias Vaughn and Ringway; she wasn't going to let Yaz make the mistake of doing something stupid. "Why do you think Jack made you recite the message the way you did? Jack's from the 51st century originally, he knows how dangerous they are. They exploit weakness and from there, they become stronger. On top of that, this Cyberman wants something big, and that worries me even more. And it's all the more reason to destroy it."

The Doctor sighed and leaned against the controls. She didn't like what she'd said any more than her friends, her fam, did. "I don't like the thought of destroying anyone," she whispered. "But the Cybermen are an exception. They are always waiting for an opportunity."

"You haven't told us about Lee and Ruth and the Judoon," Yaz pointed out, although the Doctor guessed from the concerned and wary look in her eyes she was trying to change the subject. "Who was the fugitive?"

If there was one good thing about the discussion about this Cyberman it was so then the Doctor wouldn't be reflecting on what she had experienced. But now…She looked down at the controls.

"Ruth was the fugitive," she said, once more thinking about what she was going to say. She had planned on saying that and then saying Ruth was apparently her although she couldn't see it; attitude aside, Ruth had acted little like her. "But when I was with her….," she sighed so she could gather her thoughts. "Ruth took me to a lighthouse on the coast, but there was an unmarked grave there just as I was beginning to take a look around. An unmarked grave in a situation like this would always attract my attention so I opened it up…."

"And?" Yaz pressed.

"What did you find?" Graham asked more patiently than Yaz.

This was the part the Doctor still found difficult to accept, but she needed to get it out so she could make sense of it before she went mad. "When I opened up the grave, I found the top of the TARDIS."

"What?" All three humans yelled at the same time, the loud volume alone making the Doctor wince.

"How could the TARDIS be in that grave?" Ryan asked.

"Hold on, was Ruth you?" Yaz said. "That regeneration thing?"

"The Judoon were looking for you, Doc?" Graham asked.

The Doctor was taken by surprise by the questions, but she answered them anyway. "Apparently, Ruth was a version of me; at first when I saw her version of the TARDIS, I assumed she was a future regeneration, but she didn't recognise me. I would recognise all of my past lives, but she didn't recognise me. Instead, she said I was her future, she was my past. But I didn't know her. I know my own past, and Ruth didn't fit in it. And yeah," she added when she recalled Graham's question, "the Judoon were looking for her. Apparently they had been hired by the Time Lords themselves."

"Your people?" Ryan said.

"Yeah. There was another Time Lord, a woman called Gat, on the Judoon ship. Apparently Ruth and Gat had worked together, and whatever their job was, it involved a lot of guns. Ruth apparently tried to escape the Time Lords, and she went to extreme lengths to do it."

"But she was human," Yaz insisted.

"Yeah, she didn't recognise the Judoon. She didn't come out with anything alien when we were there," Ryan added as he recalled his brief contact with Ruth.

"She hid on Earth, by using this," the Doctor said, flicking a few controls.

From the ceiling, something on cables was lowered down. It was a strange device which looked like it could stretch over the whole head.

"What is it?" Graham asked.

"It's called a chameleon arch," the Doctor explained, studying the now named arch grimly as she remembered using it herself in her tenth incarnation while Martha had travelled with her. "Time Lords use them to study alien cultures closely without history being put at risk; they have the power to transform a Time Lord into an alien of their choice. The databank it's connected to contains the genetic codes of millions of species, and it uses the Time Lord's regenerative energy to transform them. It's not a pleasant process. It is very painful."

Yaz was looking at her knowingly. "You've used it yourself, haven't you?"

"Just once. I used it a few regenerations back. I was being hunted by these time-travelling aliens who wanted my regeneration energy to live forever since their own lifespans were brief. I hid because I knew if they caught me, I would lose it with them. And I did," the Doctor's voice was grim as she reflected on what she had done with the Family.

"What do you mean?" Ryan asked hesitantly.

"Time Lords do not get angry like regular aliens. We strategise, and we make our anger felt where it really hurts. In these aliens case, they were looking to live forever. My solution was to shove one of them into a collapsing galaxy, imprison one of them in every mirror, unable to escape, and freeze another time. They were firing on a human village before the First World War. I was furious," the Doctor shook her head. "I don't know how long Ruth was hiding out on Earth, and I have no idea where Lee fitted into this beyond him being her protector."

Ryan tilted his head curiously. "Could Ruth be you from another timeline, like that alternate Earth with the Dregs and everything?"

The Doctor felt like kicking herself. She had been so taken by surprise by what she'd seen her counterpart do, now it seemed logical for Ruth to be _a _past regeneration for a potential timeline. "It would explain a great deal," she admitted, hoping none of her fam saw her mentally kicking herself for not seeing the obvious answer sooner. "Like why Ruth kept claiming she was me, I was a future self, and Gat claiming she was in service to Gallifrey. But the problem is, where did the divergence happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"Timelines rarely diverge on their own. Usually, someone makes a different decision to force the divergence. Even the Time Lords can't prevent that happening to themselves," the Doctor explained while she thought about what she'd seen when she'd met Ruth. "She had worked for the Time Lords personally. She'd wanted to get out of that position, even going as far as using the chameleon arch on herself. I wonder if she was an alternate third me."

"An alternate third you?" Graham repeated.

"Yeah, how many faces have you had?"

"This is my thirteenth face," the Doctor said briefly. "Anyway, it would make sense if she was my third self in a different reality. She was quite bitter towards the Time Lords."

"Why would she be bitter?" Ryan asked.

The Doctor bit her lip. "Do you remember when you asked me who I was shortly after we'd faced the Master?"

They nodded.

"Yeah, you did," Yaz said.

"I also told you I'd stolen the TARDIS and left. Do you really think my people were happy about that? I can tell you they weren't, especially when I began interfering in the affairs of other people and races. The Time Lords greatest law was one of non-intervention; to cut a long story short, my people uplifted a primitive race and gave them advanced technology. Unfortunately, they later grew fearful of my people, and they forced us out at gunpoint. They then blew themselves up along with their planet."

Her fam was horrified by what the Time Lords had done, but the Doctor carried on. "While I admit I do interfere, I always do it without taking things too far; my people uplifted an entire culture, giving them advanced technology and knowledge. I don't do that, you know that. I just arrive and I leave, but in between, I end the threat, and that is it. But to my people, its an excuse.

"When I first left Gallifrey in my first life, I took the TARDIS when the navigational systems were not in perfect condition. That was a benefit because if I didn't know where and when I was going how could my people? It caused grief for the people I met and brought into the TARDIS with me, but after using the TARDIS for my first and second lives, I grew better at the controls although my knowledge of this particular TARDIS was limited since it was an older model.

"In my second incarnation, I had to sacrifice my freedom and potentially my life to help a group of stranded human soldiers from different times in Earth's history from a race of aliens who were planning on brainwashing them and using them as an invincible army across the Milky Way. I stopped the plan, but I couldn't take them home and the technology which was used to kidnap them was breaking down. In the end, I had to call my people for help. As soon as I sent my message my people captured me and brought me back to Gallifrey. They put the head of the aliens on trial, and when he tried to escape when a small group of his soldiers arrived, he was dematerialised with them."

"Dematerialised? Isn't that what the TARDIS does all the time?" Ryan asked.

"In this context, its the worst punishment my people apply. The alien leader and his soldiers were removed from history itself."

Graham shuddered while he wondered how that felt, but he decided he didn't want to know. "And you, Doc? What happened?"

The Doctor shook her head, remembering Jamie and Zoe and their last-ditch attempt to escape before the Time Lords stopped them. "I was travelling with two friends at the time," she whispered, "Jamie and Zoe. The Time Lords wiped their memories and sent them to their home times."

Yaz regarded her friend sadly, seeing for herself even now it still hurt the Doctor. She was angry with the Time Lords for doing that to her, but it was years ago from the Doctor's perspective. "What happened to you?"

"I was exiled to Earth. The Time Lords force-regenerated me into a new body, removing my memory of how the TARDIS worked which would make it impossible for me to repair her," the Doctor replied, his face contorting angrily as she remembered what the Time Lords had done to her. "I spent five years in exile on Earth, and in that time I tried to work on the TARDIS but the attempts always blew up in my face. But at the same time, my knowledge of the ship increased in leaps and bounds simply because I wasn't continuously on the move."

"What's all this gotta do with the Ruth-you?" Ryan asked.

"Because I'm trying to figure out how our lives diverged. She could have been caught in the same way as I was, or the divergence happened years before, but in the end, she would have been caught by the Time Lords and forced to work for them; Ruth did say she had tried to get out of working for our people and not having much luck," the Doctor explained while her mind worked out the finer details as she tried to understand her counterpart's life. "Maybe, instead of being exiled like I was, she was instead forced to work for them. Only she did something and went on the run, something serious enough to bring in the Judoon, although why my people would do that, I have no idea. We have our own methods for catching Time Lord criminals. We don't need outsiders to do the dirty work for us."

"Do you really think she's your third incarnation in a different timeline, Doc?"

"It would make sense to me if she did; I never liked working for my people, and neither does she. Her TARDIS console room is an almost exact dead ringer for the one I used back in my past. Long story short, the TARDIS rooms can change around."

"Do you think we will meet her again, Doctor?" Yaz asked, taking that note about the TARDIS in her stride.

"I don't know," the Doctor replied honestly, although she made a mental note to program the TARDIS to look out for the signature of another Type 40. In fact, she was tempted to follow the signature now and hopefully get some answers from her counterpart.

The Doctor was left wondering if the fall of Gallifrey thanks to the Master had opened up the floodgates the Time Lords usually kept a close tight lid on to stop alternate timelines seeping in, and she wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. With Gallifrey in its current state, she would need to keep an eye out for others, but what she was really interested in was this latest case.

An alternate her.

The Doctor hoped she did find out more about the other her, and soon. At the same time, she wanted to try to find out what was happening to time. She didn't like the way it was swirling around her….


End file.
